Version 1.2, 23 May 2019

Version history:

• 1.0, 9 February 2018

• 1.0.1, 9 February 2018

• 1.1, 17 May 2019

• 1.2, 23 May 2019

The Mandaic script

The Mandaic script is a right-to-left alphabet. For a brief description of the script, see ScriptSource.org and especially Richard Ishida’s Mandaic script summary. Software support for Mandaic is very patchy, especially among page layout applications. It is to be noted that as of the time of this writing, May 23, 2019, the latest version of Adobe InDesign (CC 2019, v. 14.02) is still not capable of correctly rendering Mandaic text. This rules out most typesetters employed by Brill.

Typesetting Mandaic texts is currently only possible at TAT Zetwerk of Utrecht, the Netherlands, because they utilize a LuaTeX setup, in which they have access to very low-level program code and to the complete text stack.

Fonts

The only non-bitmap typeface available for the Mandaic script per the time of this writing, May 23, 2019, is Google’s Noto Sans Mandaic.

Type specifications

• Brill 11 pt: ~ Noto Sans Mandaic 11¼ pt

• Brill 10 pt: ~ Noto Sans Mandaic 10¼ pt

• Brill 9 pt: ~ Noto Sans Mandaic 9¼ pt

Mandaic text input

At this time, only Richard Ishida provides a text input method via his online Mandaic character picker.